Kubark
by Sleipnir'sEighthLeg
Summary: Hannibal Lecture, a surreptitious CIA agent, has inherited a life dedicated to calculated acts of psycho-terrorism. When the FBI threatens to dismantle the CIA's covert empire, Hannibal's existence is threatened by his appeal to Will Graham; a clever, slightly odd FBI agent captured by the CIA. But can bonds be trusted in a world constructed by lies, manipulation, and mind control?


The vision before me was overwhelming, yet the derailed side of me saw it as a picture of perfection. Basked in the glow of the stark white moonlight was the figure of a broken man, arguably more damaged than myself. In a room with burned white walls written with the lies and the evil it had seen over these desolate years, he sat in front of the only object in the room.

The extravagant ebony piano against the wide bay window seemed small beside the power of the man careening his long white fingers along the keys. His black appearance stood out considerably from the background, the cracked glass of the window covered in a thin sheen of grey, macabre mist. The mist masked the disheveled state of the world outside and further closed us into this small, agonizing room. There were no sounds from beyond the window where the nation's capital lay-not the rushing of the sewage down the damp streets or the fabricated words of the unprepossessing towns' people whose minds were most likely manipulated and contorted into mindless puppets by my grand body of work. It was silent but for the haunting melody whispering to me from the enormous instrument.

The echo of ivory defined the atmosphere; wilting, abasing yet beautiful. It was my favorite song. Its notes registered within the furthest depths of my soul and satisfied the most complicated facets of my inhuman mind. It vibrated from my core, from the soles of my feet to the crown of my head. I visibly shuttered in the heated empty room, watching his fingers create the extraordinary music. Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto no. 2, Adagio Sostenuto. He knew it was my favorite. Though I could see he was not playing it for my pleasure. He was playing it because it was the one thing he needed to hear at this moment-the one element that would sooth his tampered memory.

The plight of good and evil had taken a toll on him lately. Day by day I could see the stress of his situation growing larger and larger. By now it was almost an unmentionable weight, which he couldn't bear to put on my shoulders no matter how hard I pleaded with him. Instead he fought through the pain of the double-edged sword by shutting himself away within this room where the bewitching music he created lived in perfect balance with the melancholy of the atmosphere. It was a balance he craved and a balance he could not achieve in his own life.

I almost felt like I was gazing upon something that should be forbidden to my hazel-stained gaze, but I could not as much as glance away. It broke my heart to see him pounding away on the ivory: harsh, explicit sounds battling the soft feather light touches of the keys as different emotions paraded through his glorious mind. His slightly curled brown hair clung to the back of his neck with a sticky sheen of sweat in the summer air. His cold, grey eyes were closed. They were hidden by his lavender lids prickled with the tears he would rather die than allow me to see. The weakness of his demeanor was reflected over his entire body as his rendition of the Russian composer's masterpiece came to a close. His body was stiff, his muscles visibly clenched through the light fabric of his black Oxford shirt. His black slacks and black leather loafers were slamming a bit too hard into the piano pedals. They meshed horribly with the delicate tones of the intoxicating melody.

Finally, it seemed like the moment all came crashing down. His tear stained eyes, his tense posture, the emptiness of the crippling room, and the screaming ivory came to a sudden halt as he violently stood up from the piano bench, knocking it over in the process. The piano protested in ravenous agony, its off-key, blistering sound resembling the anguish of the beautiful man, as he smashed his clenched fists down upon the keys. The movement startled me. The sound of the air that swept into my lungs dismantled his illusion that he was alone inside of my home….our home.

His frosted eyes shot open in my direction. Their scornful depths were filled with the exact blind fury I expected. His breathing was ragged, his chest heaving heavily up and down, and his white teeth were clenched. His constricted muscles shifted towards me like an elk bounding antlers-first towards his unfortunate enemy. His whole body was coiled like a snake.

"Why have you come here?" He growled through his teeth. The violence he displayed was not that of anger or monstrosity. It was that of unwillingness and insecurity. He hated me seeing him as weak and disturbed. He wanted me to see him as an intelligent, controlled master of the universe instead of a self-conscious skeleton of that man. Though what he didn't understand was that his loss of composure was strength in my eyes. In fact, it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever laid eyes upon.

I stepped through the doorway, my black Santoni loafers making deep taping sounds on the mahogany floor. Nothing on his body changed as I came closer. He was like stone, his eyes locked with mine. Through his fury I could see he was afraid to move. He was afraid to show that spark of pain he was sealing inside of himself this entire night.

He kept himself controlled and almost distant. As I approached him, he breathed heavily though his nose. I could almost feel his lungs burning as they tried to sustain his whole body from breaking into a million pieces. I reached out and laid my palm against his heated flesh, and as our skin made contact, his strength unfolded.

He exhaled a long strenuous breath. His inhale was harsh and asphyxiated by the erupting tears cascading down his red cheeks. His whole body began to tremble, vibrating through my frame. A loud sob ripped through his chest and his shaking hand lay firmly against my palm.

His collapse should have broken me, but instead it drove me. I had been waiting for so long for him to just let go and let me take some of the pain he felt. I absorbed his guilt with pleasure. I took in the brutal memories of his fragile mind with solace. I collected the numbered beats of his secretly radiant heart with comfort.

It was a side of him I would probably never see again, but a side of him that I craved every day to experience. He so rarely gave himself over to the bitterness of his mind. He and I had that in common. We both chose to dwell within our pasts, caged comfortably like animals within sunken memories. But we both knew that it was better for us to unleash our demons once in a while and confide in each other, if only for a moment.

This particulate moment, however, ended much too quickly. Almost as soon as it had begun, he removed his hand from my palm, his shaking subsiding and his eyes growing intensely cold. Realization hit him hard and the consequences of his actions were catching up with him. His tough interior struggled to regain control. I could almost feel the blood rushing to his head, silencing the rational part of his insanity. He reached over behind him and grabbed the piano bench. He lifted it up, seeming to weigh it in his hands, before catapulting it through the cracked glass of the bay window. The glass shattered with a loud disgruntling smash.

"Why have you come here?" He hissed, rolling up his sleeves and grabbing the tops of my arms. The warmth from his skin did nothing to heal the ice splintering in his veins. I held eye contact with him as he tried to find some sense in my expression. I kept my eyes as cold as his, almost mimicking his irrational actions. He looked like he wanted to slap me across the face or inflict harm upon me like he had the piano bench. But I knew he never would.

When I didn't respond to his grating question, he grew more and more angry. His hands were restraining themselves from cutting off the circulation on the tops of my arms. "Why have you come here?" He hissed again, this time more softly, looking for a serious reply. My face was stone. "GOD DAMMIT! WHY HAVE YOU COME HERE?" His scream was almost primal, his rage reaching a sensational boiling point.

He began breathing through clenched teeth once more. The contours of his muscles were flexing around my arms, terrified to squeeze too hard, yet begging to dig into my flesh. As he began to shake, I took his body in my hands, pulling him closer to me. He released his arms from the tops of mine and wrapped his arms around my neck. While still bound tight with anger, he relaxed his cheek into the crook of my neck.

"Why have I come here?" I whispered to him rhetorically. He pulled back and turned his head up slightly to meet my eyes. Before he could say a word, I coasted him back against the piano, the keys screaming in violent protest. I gently allowed a handful of his brown locks to glide through my fingertips as I sealed our lips together for a rough, besieging kiss.

My lips were unyielding. They strove to dominate his in the hope of calming him, my tongue forcing its way inside his mouth without hope in a fight. I could feel every agonizing beat of his pulse rushing through the contradicting feelings in his body as he quickly succumbed to our intimate moment of ecstasy.

I broke away from his lips momentarily to collapse the lid of the piano. It crashed with a deafening thud, the sound bouncing around the desolate walls. I wasted no time lifting his body from the keys and forcing him down against the ebony lid. The ivory screeched in agony as I shuffled my body over top of his to pin his entire body to the cold wood; such a brilliant contrast from our heated skin. I gently pinned his arms on either side of his head until I could feel his muscles slightly relax. I needed him to surrender his control to me.

His breath was still ragged. I placed my hand along his ribs so that I could feel every sharp intake of breath that filled his lungs as if he was searching for oxygen in a room full of smoke. I slowly snaked my hand down further, undoing the buttons of his shirt as I glided along his smooth, white skin. I undid his pants, and he allowed me to remove them swiftly down his toned legs. I placed hot kisses on the inside of his exposed thigh as I relished each breath he took, each one growing more calm, more even.

I kissed up his thigh and continued to place my lips over his stomach where I dragged my teeth lightly across his abdomen. I could see him bite his lip when I peered up at him. He was refusing to give me the satisfaction of his delicate moan. I could assess the confusion within his eyes questioning whether he should love me or hate me for having this power over him. His hesitation made the corners of my mouth fold up into an uneven smile.

He, nor I, uttered a word while I kissed up his neck and grabbed his jaw with my left hand, angling it slightly upward to grant me better access to the baby-soft skin right beside his earlobe. I bit down slightly on the soft flesh and I could see him bite his lip once more to keep from making a sound.

But I needed to hear him.

I hooked two eager fingers around the edges of his plaid boxes and effortlessly dragged them down his nearly shaking legs. He was naked before me now but for his unbuttoned shirt. I slide my hands down the side of his torso, pulling his body up to mine. The piano screamed once more in the room that was too quite at this very moment. I collected him within my hands, still placing kisses along his neck.

My pulse flooded to my head and rattled in my brain. It beat loudly around my ears, so much so that I almost missed it when he finally allowed himself to succumb to sounds of pleasure. His small, delicate moan as I nibbled the base of his neckline raised goose bumps on my oversensitive skin. He moaned my name, vulnerable and waiting, my fingers encircling his hip bones and my lips dragging back down his fragile skin.

"This is why I've come here," I breathed against his stomach, my body lulling into absolute contentment.

The familiar rush of sickness invades the core of my stomach as consciousness floods into my fabricated memories. I shoot up, gasping for air. As always, I am alone on the grand black piano. The white walls of my forgotten, ransacked former home suddenly speak a thousand words as they always do. Their deathly whispers drilled into my brain. The piano seems to be playing itself, the ivory taunting me with Rachmaniov's gorgeous symphony.

I grip my knees, the room shaking. I feel like the devil is laughing at me, his menacing cackle vibrating through my soul and controlling me. He wants me to disappear, to become a broken entity of what I once was; a shell, an invisible monster. He wants me to melt into the shrinking walls caving in on me, calling me, inviting me into the pits of fire it possesses. Its memories are too much for me to handle. It is karma, really. I have spent too much of my life ruining peoples' minds with false memories, false identities.

Nothing is more false to me than my beautiful broken man; the man whom I love who is never to be with me in this room again. I have convinced myself that it is good that he is gone. He does not have to deal with this crazy mess of an existence that we have both adopted for ourselves. He can be free to live a normal life, maybe rescue more dogs, settle down, have children—do all of the things he never could do with a cursed, begrudged soul like me.

The piano sings in the compressing room. I cannot think anymore, I cannot feel. I want him; I need him, but I know that I have to let him go. I know I have to let go of what I had before. I have to leave this place, this room, this love, and never come back. I am becoming sick. I am giving into what the devil wants. He wants me to melt away into a fragile state of misery. He wants me to feed off of my own self-torture until I become a ghost.

"Why have I come here?" I ask myself as I always ask myself. I still do not have an answer. I know it is for him-to let him haunt me and mock me even though he is only the product of my crippled mind. He is but one of my demons conjured up from the depths of my sub-consciousness.

I lay my body on the piano, the whispers still invading my brain and the piano still singing the haunting chorus of Rachmaninov's master piece. I still feel his fingers on my skin, his lips on my neck, my body rocking from the immense pleasure. And there is nothing I can do but close my eyes and succumb to my own personal form of torture brought about by memories engraved on the fragile depths of my mind.

My ghost sighs, a broken piano cries in an empty room, the devil laughs, and I once again begin to wallow in the vivid and tormenting memories of Will Graham.

Why have I come here?


End file.
